


let's tell stories on the canvas of our skin

by andibeth82



Series: minds without fear [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Mission Fic, Natasha Feels, Natasha's head is a dark place, POV Natasha Romanov, Post-Avengers (2012)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-05 02:15:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1088408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You tell me that maybe some debts aren’t meant to be repaid and I know it’s a joke, a simple line that means you don’t really expect me to spend my whole life trying to make up for my mistakes, but even that comfort is never enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let's tell stories on the canvas of our skin

**Author's Note:**

> A few months after the events of New York, post-mission, Natasha contemplates.
> 
> Eternal thanks to [bobsessive](http://bobsessive.tumblr.com) for beta & indulging in my dark feelings.

No one ever asks, and maybe they assume otherwise - but yes, I do remember my first kill.

I held the knife like a toy, stuck it into soft, warm flesh as if I was cutting through the same piece of the rotten fruit I’d been fed for days. I felt the stain of the hot blood as it seeped onto my hands, my stomach, dripping down my legs and pooling around my feet like a rite of passage. When I turned, there was another – face frozen in fear and hands raised in surrender and again: cold metal into bodily warmth, the rush of blood, a limp form. Two figures bleeding out into the ground, the beginning of my ledger, a starting line practically begging to be peppered with red.

I lie and I kill and it’s so simple, really. Loki wasn’t actually wrong in that assessment, as much as I wanted him to be.

I’ve never been anything else. Once, a child. Once, a lover. Once, a ballerina. (Supposedly.) I don’t remember any of that, though. I pretend to, at night when you’re asleep, and sometimes after a mission when I know you’re _really_ asleep and not just closing your eyes because you know it will satiate me. I trace pictures of my past onto the pillow, names of men I’ve killed and faces that I only vaguely recall, I press my cheek into the fabric of cheap hotel cloth while my brain tries to make sense of memories that don’t really exist but that I can never truly forget.

“Are you awake?”

 _I’m always awake._ But you know that, because you know me better than I know myself and sometimes I hate that I can never hide anything from you. I’ve spent my entire life training myself to be unreadable, and you were able to unravel me in less time than it took to remake myself into an emotionless monster.

That’s not fair. That’s not how my life is supposed to work.

Then again, you weren’t supposed to save me, either. You were supposed to let me die. That was your mission, wasn’t it? To put me down? And I wanted to die, I wanted you to kill me; and when I saw your bowstring pulled back tight and felt the concrete wall hard against my back, it wasn’t a question of how I was going to get out. I knew I wasn’t going to get out, because I do my own homework, and I know that you never, ever miss.

And then what happened? You _missed_ , goddammit; you missed and now I’m alive and you gave me this second life that I never even knew I wanted. A gift and debt I can never repay, though believe me, I’ve tried and tried and you know that I’ve tried. It eats me up inside, the fact that I can never do something that selfless for you, change your life the way you changed mine. You tell me that maybe some debts aren’t meant to be repaid and I know it’s a joke, a simple line that means you don’t really expect me to spend my whole life trying to make up for my mistakes, but even that comfort is never enough.

I’d hate you, if I didn’t love you.

 

***

 

“Drink?”

You know what I want. You don’t even have to ask but you do anyway, because you know better than to assume anything about me, even now, even here, even after all of this. You know that I want the straight shot of the vodka I always carry in my bag, the strong stuff that you still can’t help but make a face at (though I’ve gotten you to be a bit more tolerable), filled just more than ¾ of the way up the chipped rimmed shot glass that you bought at a highway rest stop on the way to New Mexico, meant to be one of those idiotic “missed you, Tasha” presents that you started picking up for fun after two years of being partners because you got a kick out of how much I hated the idea.

(Then I went to Russia, and you got compromised, and everything went to hell, and the shot glass went unnoticed in the bowels of your suitcase until the day after New York when you pressed it into my hand without words and suddenly, it was more than an idiotic gift reminiscent of what a teenager would get his friend.)

You pour for yourself – a sympathy act, because you won’t drink – and your eyes watch. I’m not unnerved. I’m used to it. You’re always watching me, even when I think I’m alone, and maybe that’s why I don’t feel so isolated anymore, even when I have no one around except for a couple of agents who don’t know the half of what I could do if I ever went rogue. The vodka burns down my throat, its warmth curling around the insides of my body, like an invisible blanket pressed against my intestines. I can’t explain the whole thing, how it makes me feel, how _you_ make me feel, even though you’re not even touching me, you’re just sitting beside me with your eyes trained on my every move. Maybe I could explain it, if I tried. You’re good at that, letting me talk without trying to stop my thoughts, and although there are lines on your face that seem to speak otherwise, I can tell from your body language that you never judge any words I take responsibility for.

My mouth aches with the stories I could tell in this growing silence, the things I could say, if I wanted to. But I’m exhausted, and this mission took too much out of me, and my hands still shake with the blood of the five people I’ve killed tonight, the aftermath of a massacre that didn’t even need to happen at all. That’s what we do: we kill and lie and lie and kill. This is the life I chose for myself: a dangerous game with immoral consequences, but none less tragic than we deserve. To others, we may appear as heroes, but in our minds, we know the truth: one battle and a country saved does not equal out a lifetime of red.

Not for you. And certainly not for me.

 

***

 

You don’t ask if I’m going back to bed, though I know you want to. Instead, you inch into the space next to me, your fingers crawling along the sheets until they find the wire of my bra and the curve of my breast.

This is normal, too. I can’t remember when we started having sex after missions – somewhere after Moscow and before Siberia – but for some reason it just felt right to hide from the world in each other’s grasp. Inside you, no one could hurt me, and inside me, you could control what I felt. We didn’t have to talk and we didn’t have to ask questions; we didn’t even need to ask permission. We just needed to lose ourselves in each other’s scents and needs: a mutual coda to days or nights filled with blood and danger and death.

You were so afraid at first – afraid that I would kill you, maybe, even though you should have stopped being afraid of that particular hazard years ago – afraid that maybe I would fuck you and then leave you, that I just wanted your body for selfish pleasure. I suppose that part is true, because at first I did crave you as a way to forget, to feel again after being numb for so long. I wanted something of my own, something that was tangible, that would make me feel better about the things I had done, that I was continuing to do, and you were there and hell, you were _good_. But you always knew it meant something more and I know you knew, because you touched me in ways that no one ever would have touched me if they were just exploiting me.

(It’s a nice change, I told you, and you laughed and said it was high time I finally admitted you were skilled at something besides stringing an arrow.)

You’re not so afraid anymore, not even when my vodka-soaked breath wraps its hold around your body, your cock secure in my mouth. We’ve moved that mountain – small conflicts compared to what we’ve endured in the recent months: gods and monsters and magic that bled us dry in ways we still haven’t been able to explain to the world, to each other.

“Where is your weapon?”

Your voice is a whisper against my skin as you fold into me, soft and malleable, and I come apart at the seams when you touch me where I’m most vulnerable, your head dipping between my legs, the heat of you against my skin unspooling a web of memories and regret and things we can’t say.

_You are my weapon._

Knives and arrows: a farce, a show for the other agents, our bosses. Everyone thinks Barton and Romanov rely on their weapons, that they’re just _that_ good. They have no extraction plan because they never need one; they can take care of themselves or they die trying.

But they don’t know that weaponry is useless when it comes to fighting against matters of the heart, against a world where trust is fleeting, where you’re constantly on the verge of death, and only then, when everything is crumbling around you in more ways than one, does your partner become your saving grace.

They don’t know you have to rely on more than just a pocketknife or good aim if you want to come out of this alive.

“Love you, Tasha.”

Your voice is quiet. You get like this sometimes after you’ve been inside of me, soft-spoken and overwhelmed with what we can accomplish together ( _together_ ) and you feel the need to say things like that out loud because of emotions that have been awakened in the aftermath of our healing, our connections: a culmination of everything you felt when you came. It’s different than the sex we have when we’re not on the road, or when you kiss me on a night I drop by your apartment with leftover Chinese (because I know it’s been days since you’ve eaten), or the way your strong, normally taut voice carries across S.H.I.E.L.D. boardrooms in debriefings.

And I think. I think and I think and I think and then when your breathing finally levels out, I find my anchor in your hand, your body, your arm, burrowing down into the only sanctuary I’ve ever built for myself that hasn’t fallen apart around me, the only place I’ve ever felt secure and loved, and the only place that’s ever felt remotely like home.

_I love you too._


End file.
